Dealing with Kid's Acting Up

I've heard many times that when there is a new baby in the home the older siblings can get jealous or feel neglected therefore act up, sometimes in negative ways. In my case I have two older boys, and as the baby, Dahlia's first year has passed us by I've been very thankful that the boys have been such amazing kids and loving brothers with no apparent jealousy or bad behavior.....until today, when there was an incident in which made me realize my oldest might be acting up.


As I cleaned the boys's room I found a paper folded very nicely on the floor. Naturally I opened it to see what it was and it was my oldest son's progress report. He had an A, a few B's & C's and one F!!! That F really freaked me out, and it was obvious he was hiding it from me. This kid has constantly been in the honoroll and kept up his good grades, in fact tomorrow he is receiving and award for scoring high in his proficiency test last year! So this type of grade is a big surprised.


Am blaming myself for this drop in his grades, since Dahlia was born there has been less attention on both the boys, not noticeable enough but I guess enough to be having an effect on my son's grades. I do my best to split myself in many pieces to try and do everything that a mom has to do on a daily basis while working full time. We (as a family) do activities together and since he is the oldest he gets first pick most of the time. We always praise him when he does well or for his good deeds, so am not sure what kind of other attention to give him. Talking to him about his grades or what is bothering him gets us nowhere as he shuts down and chooses not to even speak to us. When he acts up or gets bad grades, punishing him doesn't work either, it seems he doesn't care about not playing on the computer or his DS because he still has a TV and an xbox. If that is taken away also then my other son suffers the consequences and that's not fair.....I feel like I've come to a dead end.

If anyone has suggestions on how to deal with kids and their reactions post baby arrival, I would love to hear your suggestions/ advise.